What was the cause of the last PC failure you came across?

Quick poll inspired by a Hardware 2.0 (JaneB) reader who wanted to know what is the most common kind of PC failure.

[poll id=335]

The most common failures I come across are"

• Dead PSUs (in new PCs)
• Dead motherboards (in PCs under a year old)
• Dead hard drives (in PCs older than about 4 years)

When it comes to my own PCs I try to minimize the chances of seeing a dead PSU by buying quality units, and reduce on the chances of being hit by a dead drive by moving them from critical service and into a non-critical role after about three years.

There's no way to protect against failures since entropy rules and if a component isn't dead, it's on the path to death. All you can do is minimize the disruption that the component failure causes.

Thoughts?